Bertz

Wait, is this "the rotation is bad" thing like a bit or did all five original guys get raptured away last night? Is this the Leftovers and they're the cast of Perfect Strangers? They're not the Indians by any stretch, but it's a good rotation.

The Twins are a really good guess. I saw on Twitter that they're currently in line for their lowest payroll since I believe '02. If not one of them than at the very least Keuchel.

Machado to either the Yankees or Dodgers and Bryce to the Phillies seems like a fait accompli at this point.

It's also the most comprehensive discussion of Russell we've gotten to date. He really ought to have been an adult and said all of that before they tendered Russell a contract, rather than the chicken-horsefeathers "release a written statement at 4pm on a Friday" way they initially announced it.

As much of a wet butt as this offseason has been, I can't complain too much about the approach to the bullpen. If you're not going to go big for someone then just wait until February and grab like Ryan Madson or Oliver Perez for a couple million. Zach Britton definitely would have been cool though.

I'm not too worried about them signing Hunt. I don't expect that his situation will be resolved soon enough for him to sign this offseason, and I think RBs are fungible enough that teams won't find one who missed a year and a half to be worth that sort of headache. And that's assuming no one in management or ownership would say no even for non selfish-reasons.

Good on Joe. If he's telling the truth I appreciate the honesty as opposed to Theo's nonsense "I don't want to tell people what to think" cop out. If he's lying then oh well, it makes the reveal that much more exciting and no one will be mad at him. I can't believe I'm writing this about Mr. "Oh should I have read that?" but he's handling the PR/messaging of this offseason way better than the FO.

Basically anytime someone says "Bryce":

What happens with this if someone gets hurt in spring training? You can no longer trade to fill that gap? Or let's say you finally sign your target, you can no longer trade away the extra pieces on your roster. The first part is tough. It's what makes doing anything like this unlikely. I like the idea of "too bad, grab your checkbook and sign a replacement" but that makes this harder to pass with ownership. Maybe carve out an "if you put a guy on the 60 Day DL" type of exemption, but anytime you start introducing exceptions you open it up for abuse. The second part is an issue by design. The idea being that if you hadn't waited until after the deadline to sign your dude you wouldn't be in this predicament.

Dave Dombrowski brought up the idea of an offseason deadline. I love that. It would probably just have to be for trades, because a FA deadline would be brutal for the players. But even just a trade deadline would still move FA along as well. You'd see most prominent FAs sign in the week or three after the trade deadline, and then most of the 1 year deal guys would still wait 'til February just like they do currently.

I'm not sure all of Chatwood's salary would disappear because it's unlikely somebody is going to pick it all up. That's why everybody was suggesting bad contract trades earlier. As for Russell, we gave him a new contract, so we're obligated to pay it. I agree Gonzalez would be a good fit if PTR would open his wallet. Teams are rational: if you are willing to give up $20m worth of prospects you can make $20m worth of dead money disappear. Chatwood would not be hard to dump, it's not like he's Heyward with $100m left on his deal. For Russell, you can cut players on non guaranteed contracts (e.g. arbitration eligible guys) and only pay 1/6th of their salary. The only catch is you have to do it by a certain date, I don't remember it off hand but it's in the middle of March. We did this with Justin Grimm last year.

I just realized that Marwin Gonzalez is still a FA, which totally caught be by surprise. Man he really fits this roster well. He gives us back that flexibility that we're starting to lose with Zobrist getting older and Baez hopefully being tasked more with regular everyday shortstop duties. And he lets us banish Russell to the Phantom Zone. I understand that he's probably not an option if we're going after Bryce, but if we're not then what the hell? A "we're poor" offseason is really not that hard to pull off: - Use prospects to send Chatwood and Duensing away. Cut Russell. Boom, there's $18m to play with - Sign Gonzalez to something approximating the Ben Zobrist contract - Use whatever money you still have available on relief help. Will Smith would be my ideal, and would you look at that him plus Gonzalez is almost exactlt that $18m we just saved This is the team 2b - Gonzalez 1b - Rizzo SS - Baez 3b - Bryant LF - Schwarber C - Contreras RF - Heyward CF - Happ BN - Zobrist, Almora, Descalso, Caratini SP - Yu, Cole, Kyle, Q, Jon RP - Morrow, Smith, Strop, Cishek, Carl, Monty, Kintzler, Iowa Shuttle That team is awesome. It's not the majestic dong party that Bryce would lead to, but it's really strong from top to bottom, with plenty of depth to handle a few injuries or disappointments (Looking at at you Happ and Almora). This is what causes me to think we're still trying for Bryce. There's a good argument that waiting out the relief market is the smart way to augment the bullpen on a budget. But the rest of the market? If we're not players in the Bryce sweepstakes, what is the incentive to not go ahead and finish building the rest of the team? Unless time doesn't matter because our offseason is going to be literally just Descalso and some $4m reliever? Which....man that's a dark offseason.

That would be a good tea leaf in the "we're actually going to add players" direction. Might mean we're not willing to do a bad contract swap, and instead want the money off the books. Or it could be just another log on the fire of this horsefeathering Max Bialystok offseason.

[tweet] [/tweet] Bryant meanwhile is projected at 12.4 but after this probably fairly ought to demand 15.

I believe he forfeits the money but the A's don't get any picks or anything.

If your town has a horsefeathering Casey's General Store, you're not in Chicagoland anymore. This is worse than when comedians say they're coming to Chicago but what they actually mean is the Zanies in St. Charles.

[tweet] [/tweet] Is this the tweet that finally necessitates a dedicated Grant Brisbee appreciation thread? I think it might be.

UPDATE: Trevor Bauer clearly got his ass slapped by his bosses over going after a teenager for days via Twitter; unleashes hilariously and patently untrue apology....TO THE WORLD: [tweet] [/tweet] The headline for Deadspin's update article is maybe the best thing they've ever done:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/somebody-go-get-will-smith/ If we're for real "can't even afford a middle reliever" poor, prospects + Duensing for Will Smith is too perfect. The money's nearly a wash, and Duensing would actually look pretty good in AT&T, so the Giants could probably turn around and flip him for another prospect in July. Smith would probably be the best lefty reliever we've had since Sean Marshall. Actually, the more I think about it, we could have $50m to play with and I still want this.

This is bad. Assuming this is instead of a big time SP and not in addition to one, it's roughly to be expected though. They'll also either re-sign Moustakas or grab a 2b as well. I'm really curious to see how Grandal does outside of LA though. BP basically had him as an MVP candidate when you include framing numbers, and I wonder if that will actually travel.

I think the idea here would be that those trades might either look different or not make sense at all depending on what Bryce chooses to do. For example, they might want to use prospects to dump Chatwood if they're getting Bryce, but prefer the fabled Chatwood/Russell Martin swap if they miss out on him. As for the poll question, I don't think they will get him, but I do think they're in on him and we will find out after the fact that they were all along. Basically I see Bryce getting his $400m, and we will find out after the fact that the Cubs offered like $350m. I think this "we're poor" stuff is some combination of a dumbass leverage nonsense around their salary dumps and the team not wanting to commit to having $30m available to spend in the event they do miss on Bryce.

If the Ricketts don't want us to complain, one very simple solution is to show us a top line budget. I think the issue isn't that the team isn't spending a lot, it's that we know revenues are rising substantially (because most of that info is public), while payroll, the primary driver of expense, is rising modestly in comparison. Non player costs are surely higher than ever before, but there's not really evidence that they're making up the whole difference. Servers and analysts and such are expensive to be sure, but we're talking a Daniel Descalso sized hole in the budget, not a Bryce Harper sized one. Several years ago Ricketts said that money coming in from baseball sources would go towards baseball ops. That doesn't appear to be happening. There's three possible explanations for what IS happening: 1. The Ricketts Family is pocketing a bunch of cash 2. Baseball revenue is being used on a non baseball ops expense (renovations or debt servicing most likely) 3. There is some legit baseball expense that we're all vastly understating (it would have to be revenue sharing, considering the magnitude). #3 is certainly possible, but #1 or #2 are far more likely. I will say I'm not going to complain about the changes to the neighborhood. The IO and Salt & Pepper are the only things that have gone that I would consider at all to be a loss. And I like Gallaghet Way enough that I'm fine with the trade off.

Under on the Brewers. I definitely agree with that, but didn't say it because some people around here get very sore about the whole dismissing the Brewers thing.